War is no excuse to skip classes in Iraq

Students risk violence to return to school, friends

By LARRY KAPLOW, COX NEWS SERVICE

Published 10:00 pm, Sunday, September 24, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Between the deafening buzz of low-flying helicopters and the screaming sirens from passing convoys, school principal Basma al-Obeidi let her students know that she will not lower her standards even as war rages on.

"We are the descendants of Babylon and the Sumerians. This is our history. Our civilization. Iraq is a country of love, fraternity and science," she shouted, wagging an index finger at more than 300 girls in the school courtyard. "I don't want students to create excuses, to say, 'The road was blocked; there was a checkpoint.' Do not let these details obstruct your knowledge."

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After a few organizational days last week, public school started in earnest Sunday for about 6 million Iraqi children. It comes at the end of the bloodiest summer since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

But the opening of the school year revealed a youthful optimism about the future and friendships, in sharp contrast to the gloomy, grown-up despair throughout the city.

"Certainly, it is difficult. The situation is bad. I'm afraid of explosions and kidnappings," said Ru'a Mohammed Ali al-Badri, an 18-year-old 12th-grader and physics whiz. "(But) this is my future. I cannot neglect it."

Across the city, kids in new clothes with big bright backpacks walked past barbed wire and old blast sites, sipping juice boxes or stopping by mosques to ask for water from the armed guards on duty. They lugged new books issued by their schools and ragged editions from the open black markets that sell them when schools are in short supply.

Many parents escorted their children. Others arranged for drivers or paid for rides in private minivans that cater to students.

"I want to build my country with this knowledge," beamed Leena al-Qasar, 16. "This is the happiest day for me. I see my friends, see my teachers."

Principal al-Obeidi stood in front of her students in the palm-lined courtyard of Al-Akida (Faith) Secondary School for Girls, a middle and high school, and laid down rules familiar in many American schools.

Cell phones will be confiscated and kept even if parents come begging for them, she told them. Flashy jewelry is banned. Uniforms must be tidy and, in a local adaptation, head scarves must conform to the school's colors of navy blue and white.

But Baghdad's brutality, including sectarian death-squad killings and terrorist bombings, cast a pall over the back-to-school buzz.

The school in downtown Baghdad has a mixed student body of Sunni and Shiite Muslims and Christians. But it is in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood. One mother withdrew her daughter from the school Sunday because her mixed family has moved to a predominantly Sunni area that she feels is safer.

The Iraqi government eased procedures for children to transfer schools because hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been displaced from their old neighborhoods by sectarian killings and intimidation.

Al-Akida school is near a bridge leading to the fortified Green Zone, home to the Iraqi government and U.S. Embassy, and U.S. and Iraqi convoys rushed past by with sirens blaring throughout the morning.

Numerous bombings targeting those convoys have scared away students, teachers and maintenance workers. This year's enrollment is down to about 500 students from about 700 last year, said al-Obeidi, 56, who has worked at the school for 15 years.

The Ministry of Education announced it had asked for extra police protection and barricades for schools, but none was noticeable. For days, families had been readying themselves with back-to-school rituals.

Maythem Hassan al-Saadi, a 35-year-old day laborer, spent about $100 -- about a month's salary -- on new shoes, clothes and backpacks for his two young sons. He plans to walk his sons daily to elementary school to help them negotiate the dangers.

Al-Saadi never made it beyond sixth grade and wants his boys to go farther.

"We are better off than a lot of families," he said. "We know a lot of families that pulled their kids out. Either they are afraid or they don't have money."